Progressive oxygenation of developing leaves directs morphogenesis
- Gabriele Panicucci
- Vinay Shukla
- Viktoriia Voloboeva
- Leonardo Jo
- Kees van Kollenburg
- Sara Buti
- Laura Dalle Carbonare
- Federico M. Giorgi
- Francesco Licausi
- Daan A. Weits
2026-08-28
Oxygen availability underpins energy production in multicellular organisms, yet internal oxygen gradients arise in both plants and animals. Plants sense these variations via the plant cysteine oxidase branch of the N-degron pathway, which regulates the stability of key transcription factors. Originally linked to metabolic control, this pathway recently emerged as a development regulator. While the shoot apical meristem was shown to be hypoxic, the oxygen dynamics of organs originating from this low-oxygen niche remain unknown. Here, we show that developing leaves form a spatiotemporal oxygen gradient that is sensed through the oxygen-sensing machinery. This pathway integrates local oxygen availability to regulate leaf morphogenesis: Early hypoxia restricts cell expansion, whereas subsequent distal-to-proximal oxygenation depletes group VII ethylene response factors enabling specialized cell-fate acquisition and controlling proliferation. Our findings reveal that oxygen acts as a positional cue in normal growth, guiding developmental trajectories. This highlights opportunities to harness oxygen gradients and sensing to direct plant form and function.